At War

By Ellen O’Brien

Thou shall not fly

Over blue seas, Troubled waters.

Adhnúall is faithful to Fionn, As nature forgives And time forgets.

The river is silenced By whispers.

A stark terror ensues, A gutted fish left miserably On the surface.

Redemption is fanciful In these times.

October

By Caitlin Parnell

In our impatient, calendar-less youth, our mother would proclaim: Halloween can begin when all the leaves have fallen; when all the trees are bare And we would conspire to pluck one by one ‘til we could don our masks and stretch out primed buckets. What an atrocity to press on the hurried passage of time. Now in my life there is never a year when August’s end doesn’t harrow, threatening its easy whisper over those who dare a waking step

Merriment conceals always the forthcoming stretch of dissolution, pulling orange wool over agog eyes whose time for meeting has been plucked. Should the impenetrable cold become too much, you will wake and bury yourself beneath another layer of earth But when the darkness extends, there is no hiding from the cold that wants you — only you — in its grasp And it is only in sleep where the leaves don’t crumble, the berries don’t wrinkle, and the sun doesn’t seduce behind a wall of pernicious glass

By October, the air leaves a sting in the base of your throat as you gasp through the feeling

Of running through water from something fast approaching, always and telling yourself to enjoy the journey as every muscle heaves upon each trudging step

From a safe distance, you take yearly stock: How sparse are the hairs on your father’s head; How weak are the bones in your mother’s body; How brittle is the very skin that ties you together; How thin is blood when the cold sets in?

There is greyness in all the eyes on the six o’clock train, like we are all preparing, like we are already mourning

We are already mourning

Caught in the rain

By Eve Delaney

He said the rain suited me

My hair lay flat sticking to a dampened face

His words warped my own reality of myself

I could imagine the beautiful girl in the rain

A vision of weather weaponizing beauty

Raindrops caught on eyelashes for catching men

Lips red drenched, softer than the fall of a light drizzle

A smile lighting up the darkening clouds

I could imagine seductive me

But such thoughts fall away after the thinking

The reality so impossibly far that thought goes stone cold and dies any redness of lips or fluttering of eyes would only be for him like the shower we hurried through

I am caught

Beauty in any form of mine is sure to radiate only for you

If I am beautiful to you in a downpour

Soaking, dripping rain

It is because you made it so

Oh, to be caught without an umbrella

Such art I thought myself incapable of Your stroke proves me wrong as my colours deepen and merge

If I am the art, then you the artist

A regrettable amount of power

Hidden among the easel and brush

Would I let you shape me if you so chose?

Or will you be my Critic, my visitor, my admirer?

Shall we both take up residence in a museum

On opposite walls, my darling

Temporarily, for now, while the Exposing water bullets stay themselves

What a vulnerable position one puts oneself in

Oh, to be caught-to be caughtWithout an umbrella.